Cheap shot to slam PM for bringing vehicles to India

The sanctimony and pettiness of those who have criticized the government for flying a pair of armoured cars to India to protect Prime Minister Stephen Harper underscore how some Canadians remain deeply uncomfortable with the fact that Canada has become one of the most prosperous, well-regarded countries in the world. These people would prefer that their country just bumble along.

The indignation that this episode has provoked ignores the fact that any leader today can be a terrorist target. It is completely understandable that Canadian security officials would not wish to discuss any specific threat. Canada’s positions on Afghanistan and Iran — and the fact that Canada has sometimes been used as a refuge by Sikh terrorists and other Indian malcontents — obviously make its elected leader a potential target for all kinds of na’er-do-wells in a part of the world that is booming economically but where newspapers are full of reports of politically charged violence.

“If I was the Indian government, I would be pretty outraged that this prime minister thinks that the largest democracy in the world can’t handle his needs,” was what NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus had to say. “He needed two limos. What, one for him, the other one for his ego?”

Riffing on the same theme, Haroon Siddiqui, in the Toronto Star, wrote, “Besides insulting his hosts and angering Canadians back home, he made the limos the story, not his much-needed trade mission.”

Well, no actually. It was a few journalists and the opposition who turned concern over the prime minister’s security in India into a scandal over alleged high living and vanity.

A search of Indian news web sites reveals no reports about the prime minister’s choice of conveyance in India, let alone the “outrage” and “insult” that this development was said to have caused.

As for possible threats, there is a reason why guards are posted at every hotel, shopping mall and train entrance in India.

The country is obsessed with security because it has to be. In one of the most spectacular attacks of its kind, terrorists from Pakistan murdered 167 people in Mumbai in a three- days battle three years ago.

Nerves are still raw, even today, over how former prime minister Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv, were assassinated in separate incidents in 1984 and 1991, respectively.

The cheap shots over armoured limousines were reminiscent of what was said when Brian Mulroney’s government converted a second-hand Wardair Airbus into what his successor, Jean Chretien, derisively dubbed a “flying Taj Mahal.”

Or the criticism of Defence Minister Peter MacKay for using a military helicopter to get from a brief fishing holiday to an airport to fly to a distant meeting (when, for example, the German defence minister won’t go anywhere without his own military Boeing 737 and dozens of aides in tow).

To demonstrate how virtuous he was, rather than use the “Taj Mahal,” Chretien slept across four economy seats a couple of rows ahead of the media when travelling as prime minister.

What dignity was there in having a G7 leader fly around in steerage like that on his way to meet other world leaders?

Anyway, it was always a myth that the Airbus was luxury transport because it could be rejigged to include a bed and a couple of tiny offices.

That lie was laid bare over the weekend by journalists who were briefly invited into the inner sanctum by Harper on the flight from Canada to India.

The visitors discovered how pedestrian the VIP suite in the “the flying Taj Mahal” was, especially when compared to the beauty and grandeur of the real Taj in Agra, which the prime minister visited on Monday.

As has often happened during the controversy over whether Canada should purchase the F-35 stealth fighter, the cost of flying a Canadian Forces C-17 Globemaster to transport the armoured limousines was grossly inflated.

“Sources” told CTV that it would have cost $ 36,000 an hour to use a C-17 to ship the armoured cars to India. The real cost to fly a C-17 is between $11,000 an hour and $ 21,000, depending on the mission, with most estimates tending to be at the lower end of the range.

As an aside, U.S. President Barack Obama, who is greatly admired in Canada as a beacon of probity and common sense, required four C-17s to airlift equipment, including vehicles, whenever he has gone on vacation in Hawaii. The cost per C-17 was about $12,000 per hour, according to reports.

No matter how many times The Economist, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others rate Canada at or near the top of international tables, there will be those who prefer that Canada continue to behave as if it were a low-end, second-tier nation.